


The Sweetness of a Forgotten Fruit

by CarrKicksDoor



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: New Republic Era - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-15
Updated: 2012-02-15
Packaged: 2017-10-31 06:12:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/340829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CarrKicksDoor/pseuds/CarrKicksDoor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes memory is the most powerful aphrodisiac.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sweetness of a Forgotten Fruit

**Author's Note:**

> A year and a half post-Hand of Thrawn

Shada wasn’t entirely sure what woke her up, but as she rolled over, she could hear the soft noises coming down the corridor from the _Wild Karrde_ ’s galley. Opening her eyes, she looked towards the window, the blue whorls of hyperspace peeking through the curtains. She thought about closing her eyes again, but now that she’d heard someone in the upper galley, her stomach rumbled in complaint, reminding her that she’d skipped dinner earlier and there was food in the galley, and possibly caf and conversation, maybe even a sabaac game, and Aves still owed her money.  
  
Her brain was now wide awake, even if her body was protesting. Shada stretched her arms over her head and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She reached for the soft tunic and pants she’d had on earlier in the day. She pulled on a pair of socks to protect her feet from the cold durasteel plating of the deck in the corridor outside, and yanking her dark hair up out of her face into a loose bun, she opened her door.  
  
The hallway was dim, the lights lowered to accommodate ship’s night, though the _Wild Karrde_ rarely operated on any set schedule. Still, most of the crew had settled down for the night, other than the night shift on the bridge, and Shada didn’t see anyone else as she moved down the corridor past a few other closed doors.  
  
She paused in the doorway to the galley. The lights were still low, saving the scene before her from the bright florescence of the day lights. Set out on one of the galley counters were a variety of items, and Karrde stood, simply clad, his coat and vest draped over one of the stools, sleeves rolled up, his hands in a bowl mixing ingredients. Something was simmering on the stovetop, and as Shada took one additional step, she was struck by the perfumed scent of some of the tahsani fruit they’d picked up earlier in the day.   
  
She stood there for a moment, simply watching him work the material in the bowl together. She’d have had to have been blind not to notice how attractive Karrde was, his dark hair that was graying at the temples in a distinguished way, his square shoulders, and the deep gravel in his voice. Shada, after having spent most of her time among the Mistryl warrior women, had found she had developed an appreciation for the male form that she’d never truly considered before, and this male form more than others.  
  
He finally lifted his head, dusted his hands and looked directly at her, a smile twitching at the corner of his mouth. “Were you planning on standing there the rest of the evening, or were you going to come in and sit down?”  
  
The quirk of a smile was contagious, and Shada felt her cheeks warm as she detached herself from the wall and walked over to the counter, pulling a stool over and perching upon it. “I didn’t know you cooked,” she said. “I thought you were more of the food prep unit type person.”  
  
Karrde raised an eyebrow, but the smile that had been ghosting across the corner of his mouth had spread across his entire face in a relaxed expression that she wasn’t sure she’d ever truly seen. “I’ve never cooked much,” he said. “But after we picked up that tahsani fruit this morning, it was on my mind.” He reached for the butter that had been sitting out on the counter, cutting it into pieces. “My mother used to make a pie out of tahsani fruit, and I thought I’d see if I could recreate it.”  
  
Shada raised an eyebrow. “You have a mother? Most of the crew figured you sprang fully formed from a smuggling crate.”  
  
His smile didn’t disappear, and she leaned forward, propping her chin on her fists, watching his face relax even more in reminiscence. “I don’t suppose I ever told you about my mother.”  
  
Shada shook her head, watching him finish cutting the butter into pieces, his hands dusty with flour. Karrde’s eyes raised to the ceiling, as if he would find his mother’s face inscribed on the ceiling tiles. “She raised me alone. We lived out on a nerf ranch, and my mother did the cooking for the rancher and his hands. Real cooking, too. She refused to have a food prep unit in the house. My father had left not long after I was born, but I never suffered for one, not with all the uncles I had on the ranch. So she cooked, and I went to school and worked on the ranch until she died when I was about fifteen. After that, I ran off to find my own way and fell in with Car’das.”  
  
“And she made pie out of tahsani fruit?” Shada asked quietly.  
  
“That was about all she made pie from. We had a little orchard for tahsani fruit on the farm, and we had tahsani everything.” Karrde started putting the little pieces of butter into the bowl. “Force, I hated the stuff by the time she died, but when we picked up this shipment, I remembered it.”  
  
“So what are you doing?” Shada asked, standing up on one of the rungs of the stool to peer into the bowl. She’d never been able to cook anything unless she was roasting it over a fire—those situations usually had found her in some kind of trouble. She’d always used the Mistryl self-contained meal packs or the food prep unit wherever she happened to be.  
  
“Making the crust,” Karrde said. “Come over here and I’ll show you.”  
  
Shada did as he asked, standing there watching him finish dropping the butter into the bowl. “It’s just flour and sugar and a little salt. But the butter has to be really cold for this to work.” He stuck his fingers back into the bowl, working the little pieces of butter into the flour. “If we have a mixer on this ship, I can’t find it,” he said. “But this has to go back in the refrigeration unit when it’s mixed anyway.”  
  
Her fingers were itching to try, and Karrde stepped to the side. “Go ahead.”  
  
“Are you sure?” Shada said, her hands hovering over the bowl as he dusted off his hands. “I don’t want to mess up your pie.”  
  
He let out a laugh, one of those laughs that she waited and hoped for, coming from deep in his throat, rumbling out through his chest. “You’re just mixing it together, Shada. It’s hard to mess that up. Go ahead. I’ve got to stir the tahsani fruit.”  
  
She dipped her hands into the bowl, letting the silkiness of the flour run over her fingers, pinching the pieces of butter into the mix. She couldn’t see him, but she could sense his presence behind her as he stirred the pot that was sitting on the stove’s heating element. Proprioception, they called it, but extending outward to include him in the space, extra-sensory perception including him in her awareness of the space around her. She could feel when he turned around to look over her shoulder at her progress. The mixture was coming together, tiny bits of flour and sugar and butter and salt forming beads in the bowl. “Good job,” he said, his breath ghosting across her ear and the side of her face as she continued. “Keep going until it makes a solid ball. Then we’ll roll it out.”  
  
His hands, still dusty, made their way to her hips. Shada barely noticed—it was often a gesture he made when they were at negotiations, an outward expression of his dominance over everything around him, and a reminder that he employed beautiful, deadly women who were answerable only to him. But his arms had never continued on to wind themselves around her waist like they did now, his chin never came to rest on her shoulder, he never stood behind her and breathed her in and caused her to relax back into him the way that he was doing now.   
  
“Talon,” she whispered, barely turning her head towards him, her heart beginning to jump uncomfortably in her chest, her breath struggling to inhale and exhale as she formed the mixture in the bowl into a formal ball. “What next?”  
  
She felt him take a deep breath, his arms loosening from around her as he picked up the bowl, moving across the kitchen to put it in the freezer. “A few minutes in there, and it’ll be ready to roll out,” he said without looking at her. He stood there, facing the fridge for a moment, regathering his composure before facing her again. The relaxation in his stance had disappeared, and though Karrde had not reverted to the persona he usually assumed, he was no longer the man she’d seen only moments before. Now he was tense, uncomfortable in her presence, and she wondered if that brief moment had ruined this peaceful moment for him, remembering what she felt were few simple moments in his past. She wiped her hands on a towel, her fingers no longer floury but greasy with the residue of the butter from the crust. She should go, but something kept her standing there. “How long does it stay in the freezer?”  
  
“Just a few minutes,” he said, and she noted with a little satisfaction that the tension drained a bit from his shoulders. “We have to stir the tahsani,” he continued, gesturing towards the stove.   
  
Shada turned to look over the stove, the orange-colored fruit darkening in the saucepot, simmering, losing the tartness of a raw tahsani, bringing out the sweetness. “What all is in here?”  
  
“Water and some sugar,” Karrde said. She felt his eyes on her as she gently pushed the spoon around in the mixture, nearly approaching a gelatinous state, making sure that she scraped the bottom of the pan. She glanced up at him with lidded eyes, and it was enough encouragement that Karrde’s uncharacteristic uncomfortableness started to disappear. He moved behind her again, reaching around her and covering her hand with her his own, simply helping her stir the fruit, which perfumed the air around them with a tropical scent the longer it sat on the stove. He nuzzled his face into her hair, whispering her name. “Shada.”  
  
She lifted her hand, cupping the back of his head, holding him to her, closing her eyes and gently threading her fingers in his thick hair. She’d been so involved in protecting herself for so long that she couldn’t help, now, in a position where she could trust someone, to let down her guard, to hold on to something even stronger than she was.   
  
Pressure on her hips caused her to turn to face him, and she opened her eyes to study his face. He was searching for something in her face—permission? “Are you just going to stand there?” she asked in a whisper, “or are you going to kiss me, Talon?”  
  
His breath hitched in his chest. “Tell me you want this, Shada,” he said in low urgent tones. “If you don’t, I’ll walk away and never—“  
  
She cut him off, leaning forward, pressing her lips to his, and his grip on her tightened, pulling her flush against him. He tasted like the tahsani fruit he’d sampled as he cooked, and her head spun, insistent on not letting him go, ever, because surely she needed him like she needed air. Shada finally broke away, her hands resting on his upper arms, and she felt herself smile. “I want this,” she said.  
  
He whispered something like a prayer before his mouth descended on hers again.  
  
***  
  
“Seriously,” Aves said, facing down the bridge crew as the _Wild Karrde_ left hyperspace. “I don’t know who was trying to cook in the galley last night, but this—“ he gestured with a pot that might have once held some kind of fruit concoction “—is what was left when I went in there this morning.” He gritted his teeth. “Just because it’s my turn to do the dishes in the galley doesn’t mean that you all get a right to go kriff around in the kitchen and leave this kind of mess.” He set the pan down with a clang on the console. “I have three words for you all. Food. Prep. Unit.”  
  
He picked up the pot and left the bridge, running into Karrde and Shada. “Boss. Shada.” Aves continued his stomp out back towards the galley.  
  
Shada turned a questioning eye to Karrde. “Was that the pot with tahsani fruit?”  
  
Karrde shrugged. “We’ve got more. We can finish it later.”  
  
The smile spread across her face before she remembered that they were in public, and she brushed past him to her station with a flush on her face, knowing his eyes were following her until he moved towards his seat. “Dankin, set us down. Let’s see what we’ve got.”


End file.
